Philippine authorities have filed murder charges against the country’s prisons chief and others in connection with the assassination of a prominent radio journalist, which attracted international condemnation.
The charges were filed on Monday against suspended Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag, prisons security official Ricardo Zulueta, and other key suspects in the October 3 fatal shooting of Percival Mabasa.
The 63-year-old was killed by two assailants on a motorcycle at the gate of a residential compound in the Las Pinas area of suburban Manila. Mabasa had fiercely criticised Bantag and other officials for alleged corruption and other anomalies.
A joint statement read at a news conference by top justice, interior and police officials said three gang leaders locked up in the country’s largest prison under Bantag’s control were tapped to look for a gunman to kill Mabasa for a 550,000-peso ($9,400) contract.
After the killing, however, the gunman, who was identified by police as Joel Escorial, surrendered in fear after government officials raised a reward for his capture. He then publicly identified an inmate, Jun Villamor, who he said was assigned by detained gang leaders to call him and arrange Mabasa’s killing.
The gang leaders later killed Villamor inside the prison by suffocating him with a plastic bag allegedly on orders of Bantag and Zulueta, officials said.
Eugene Javier, a National Bureau of Investigation agent reading the statement said “Bantag had a clear motive to effect the murders … For Percy Lapid, it was the continued exposé by the latter of the issues against the former on his show, Lapid Fire.”
Bantag has denied any involvement in the killings. He and Zulueta have also been charged for the killing of Villamor. No warrants have been issued yet for their arrests, officials said.
Mabasa, who used the broadcast name Percy Lapid, is among the latest media workers killed in a Southeast Asian country regarded as among the most dangerous for journalists in the world.
‘Good development’
Jonathan De Santos, chairman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, welcomed the “good development” in the case, but warned there was a long way to go.
“As we have seen it takes a decade or more to secure a conviction,” De Santos told AFP news agency.
Aside from Bantag, Mabasa had also strongly criticised former President Rodrigo Duterte, who oversaw a deadly crackdown on illegal drugs. Duterte ended his turbulent six-year term in June.
Duterte appointed Bantag as Bureau of Corrections chief in 2019 despite pending criminal cases. Bantag had faced charges for a 2016 clash that killed 10 inmates when he was the warden in another detention centre. A court later cleared him.
Nearly 200 journalists have been killed in the country since 1986, when dictator Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown, according to the journalists’ union. The group led a protest on Tuesday night and called on the government to do more to stop the killings.